I have been busier then a cat with two tails at a rocking chair convention with a whole lot of projects. Helping families battle back to save their children from the clutches of the tea party cult of Remnant Fellowship is one such front. There's a lot we can't say much about what we do there and in other areas, but we are still committed to watching God humble that cult and get it to where He wants it to be.Veangeance is the Lord's, says the Word of God, and if He wants it, I don't mind offering His Spirit all the help He can get here. Nor do a LOT of people across the nation who help out.
Thank you, folks. You all know who you are. By God's grace, we shall overcome and the Zion Curtain will fall someday. The false prophet Gwen Shamblin would do well to learn that she can rise with the Son of God, Jesus as God Incarnate .. or fall with the night that the shadow of God's judgment will send upon her for her heresies, destruction of families and control of lives.
Anyway, I digress. Preaching and teaching engagements (HINT HINT PASTORS!) are another pursuit and working with the Evangelical Ministries to New Religions coalition as a publication committee member is yet another. Need I say that our website continues to get a ton of email requesting we finish the article series we started on mind control, religious abuse, Wicca and the never ending three ring circus of Pentecostal and Charismatic extremism? It just goes on and on, and it's a calling we all pursue as diligently as possible - Steve and Kathy Hogel in Memphis and Lance and Heather King in Knoxville - according to the gifts and opportunities God gives us.
It never fails to amaze me at how many people read our article on Jimmy Swaggart's need to repent. The article is routinely, every month, the most viewed article after our tribute page to my favorite baseball team of all time - the Chicago Cubs. But the firestorm of emails we get from these and other ministry ventures keep us on our toes - and our attempts to help those burned by bad religion and false teachers don't allow us to sit around nights at home either. We stay as engaged as we feel led to be.
But as you know, no self-respecting End Time Apostacy would be complete without a couple of trademark poster children for falsehood, heresy, unreality or manipulation coming to the forefront. Joel Osteen, the megachurch "pastor" of the Lakewood Church seems to fit that bill well all by himself, actually. His star has increasingly splashed all across civilization everywhere like a fusillade of lightning bolts forged from Jell-O. Osteen's influence is beyond belief and his delivery of humanistic motivational oratory is being accepted as cutting edge preaching as arresting and transformational as that of George Whitfield or Martin Luther King.
So, with all of that going on in Spiritwatch Ministries, there was no better way for our ministry to have been tasked to analyze Joel Osteen's questionable doctrine and example unless we were asked to create a talk on Osteen's first best seller "Your Best Life Now" and do it within 90 days for the 2006 EMNR conference in Birmingham. Remember the old saying about how the best way to get something done is to give it to an overworked and busy person? LOL. Thanks, Bob Waldrop .. if hadn't been for you, we'd have never given an Osteen discerning a second thought because his toweringly shallow preaching speaks for itself. But we've come to see millions of people think otherwise ..
So by the grace of God, Lance and I managed to pull it off and deliver it to a good crowd of folks. Here's a link to listen to it in Real Audio if you want to hear it. A long standing project to adapt the talk Lance and I did there seemed relegated to a long delay and we never quite got it together until we finally realized that Osteen's influence has been exponentially spreading all over the world. This year seemed particularly marked, so we plunged ahead to adapt our talk into website articles.
Sola Deo Gloria, we have finally completed these. They are in 4 parts .. and in case you think there's no need to get at what's behind the smile of Joel Osteen watch this clip below .. and tell me if this is What Would Jesus Do ..
I seem to remember a verse somewhere in the Bible about this kind of unimaginable waffling that Joel Osteen seems to be engaged in here: this is What Would Jesus Say about it, we think ..
For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words,
of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels.
To read the Osteen articles, click here. We hope they be the balanced resource Lance and I have striven to make them.
